Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Thighs

Author's note - I was ill, I lost my confidence and then I lost my mojo. This is the first piece of writing I have done in a while and I feel a touch rusty. On top of that I have tried something new (as is my want on my blog)...I have tried to write a 'straight' story. I hope you like it. I would like to thank Deepthought69 for psychologically holding my hand throughout my wobble.

"For goodness sake, I am sick of this. It really does
not matter how often I tell you how wonderful you are, how beautiful you are,
how much I love your body including your thighs. You’ll never believe it until
you work it out for yourself...gah!"

Joe slammed the bedroom door and stomped down the stairs
leaving Zoe looking at herself in the mirror. It had been a throw away comment
about her thighs being too fat and dimply. It was just a remark, one that
slipped out of her mouth without hooking itself onto any brain cells prior to
its exit. Now it was free and the damage had been done. She felt terrible;
about herself, about pushing Joe yet again, about how the demons from her past
kept returning to her, wraith like and frightening.

Zoe looked down at her thighs; they were serviceable, useful
but not what she would call her best asset. She always felt that they were on
the podgy side. Too much cellulite, too much fat, too much wobble. Her family
used to tease her when she was an awkward teenager, calling her names like
'thunder thighs'. It made her cringe and feel that slow burning heat of shame
at her own body. It was an ache that started in her stomach and ended in the
back of her throat, choking her train of balanced thoughts. Once the seed of it
had been planted it insinuated itself through her whole life and subsequently strangling
all of her actions, wrapping itself around and killing all good thoughts like
ivy. When she was a teenager she thought that she was repulsive. She avoided
going swimming and shuddered at the thought ofsarongs
when she went to the beach. She liked running, or rather that asthmatic
shuffling that she called jogging, but would only do it at night for fear that
others would see her perceived imperfections. She couldn’t even contemplate sex
with the lights on because it made her too anxious to enjoy any union,
naturally that curtailed most liaisons she had.

Joe worshipped her entire body but especially her legs,
those wonderful fleshy columns that held her up. He would spend hours
languishing between her thighs mesmerised by their beauty. He would breath up
and down them as though trying to steam up a mirror and have a mischievous grin
every time she shivered with excitement. He tickled and tripped his fingers
lovingly over the landscape of her legs.

Zoe reflected on how she had ended up in front of the
mirror, naked and exposed. It had started with that foolish comment and Joe had
whipped the covers off and frog marched her across the room to face her own
reflection.

"Look at yourself," he demanded. "Look at
your legs and tell me what you really see, not what your stupid family have
told you."

Heart racing and her mouth dry, she tensed her stomach to be
brave and steal a glance at her body. In the muted early evening light she
could see that her thighs were indeed rounded, possibly they could do with
being more toned. She frowned at her image.

Holding her so tightly that he left indentations in her
shoulders he shook her until she startled out of her stupor. Emotionally shaken
at the rough handling she blinked in response, her jaw lolling open like a
badly hinged trap door.

"Tell me what you see," Joe growled.

Trying to think of something to say as her mind suddenly
emptied of all coherent though. "Umm, err," she stammered. "They
are white," burst from between her puckered lips, "and creamy."

Nodding in encouragement Joe gave her another menacing
and possessive judder. "More," he commanded. She froze like a deer
trapped in headlights, unable to respond. He had stormed out in disgust at her
inability to express herself, it became obvious that she was devoid of anything
else to say about her thighs.

So there she stood the burning sensations in her eyes
indicated that hot, soft tears would roll from her eyes, eventually pooling and
dripping from her chin. The shame of the internal conflict. She knew that Joe
saw something that the wraiths did not and she hated disappointing him. From
her perspective he was everything good that her family weren't, letting him
down was one of the worst things that she could do.

She padded over to the bed and lay down on her back with her
knees bent, pointing towards the ceiling. In this position all the fat seemed
to slide down to her hips, leaving the expanse of her upper leg looking reasonably
attractive.

"Come on girl, unless you get a grip of this it will
drive him away," she muttered to herself.

Placing her palms on each thigh she lay there absorbing the
sensation. Feeling the heat from her hands, she just closed her eyes and
breathed. Gently, she started to move her hands over her skin, acknowledging
the change in textures. She noticed that all of her leg was soft. There were
fine little hairs that eased the flow of her moving hands. Subtle shifts in her
hands felt unusually good. Zoe was able to start appreciating not just what Joe
had said but the sentiment behind it. Disrespecting her body was similar to
disrespecting him in some way that she was not too clear about but it made
sense in her head.

Mumbling to herself she said, "They are white and
creamy and soft to the touch. Like dough but not the horrible dough, dough like
bread that you can knead, with a warmth that infuses your hands." Looking
at the silver tiger stripes of her stretch marks she thought that they were ok.
The strange mercury slivers cutting through the expanse of her skin, it gave
the view texture and interest in a way that was novel to her.

The inside of her thighs were softer and more furrowed with
stretch marks than the outside. The coarse patches of hair she had missed whilst
shaving would normally fill her with guilt but they only added to the tactile
sensation. Making soft, long sweeps of her thighs with her hands, exploring
this new expanse of delight made Zoe lose track of time. She became so wrapped
up with the pleasure of it she did not hear the bedroom door open and Joe enter
the room.

Tip toe-ing towards the bed he bent down and kissed her lips
startling her out of her reverie. "Good girl." A simple but potent
statement laced with all the connotations of love, joy and possession.

Zoe looked shocked because the concept that maybe her thighs
weren’t actually that bad was now
planted in her head. It had the potential, like a seed, that with the
right nurturing would blossom into a love of her thighs

12 comments:

I've never understood why women generally dislike their thighs, maybe that's because I have a thing for legs... This gave me a valuable insight into the workings of the complex structure that is a woman's mind.

beautiful story. I would love to choke the crap out of everyone who had put negative ideas in women's heads that they are imperfect. Its a soap box topic for me and you did a wonderful write on how to begin the healing. Wobble my arse, you nailed it

That woman could have been me. Oh I guess, she could have been every woman, because what John said, women are far more negative about their bodies than men. We torture ourselves and sometimes for no reason at all!

As a woman who has those kinds of issues I totally understood her reluctance. I am constantly fussing about my tummy or my jiggly legs... My husband hates when I do that.. Perhaps I need some alone time with my legs and belly like she had..

Well written Rachel, I am going to be writing about women's confidence and how can we improve it etc soon and this is would make an awesoem reference to read for women. It is awesome you could integrate it into the story so well. <3